On a trip to Cascais, Portugal, this past June we attended a conference held by the publishing body FIPP. A culinary excursion to the Time Out Market in the heart of Lisbon was part of the programme before the annual congress got into full swing. That first visit, a day before the congress began, planted a seed with Yvonne Shaff, the MD of YourLuxury Africa that was so intriguing we had to return a day after the Cascais conference concluded.
The hook that reeled us back to the Mercado da Ribeira, once home to Lisbon’s largest and oldest produce market going back to the 13th century, was a woman who left a lingering impression that there was more to her story than an afternoon group visit could allow, and our hunch was right. Chef Marlene Vieira whose stall at the market is named after her, is widely regarded as a strong contender to become the first female chef in Portugal to earn a Michelin star, having just missed the nod for 2023.
Following the last Michelin Awards ceremony held in Toledo, Spain, a disheartened culinary peer of Chef Marlene took to social media to express that “Marlene Vieira should have earned her first star for her eponymous new restaurant. The Spanish inspectors must have travelled by train from Lisbon to Porto to save tyres, forgetting the rest of the country.” The continued overlooking of Portuguese chefs and the Michelin Society’s complete omission of Portuguese female chefs is a known thorny issue with industry insiders. “It’s very difficult to talk about it,” Chef Marlene tells me as we settle at a table right in front of her Time Out space. “Portugal is a small country so we don’t have a lot of power and next to us, we have Spain which has more power than us. They have many more Michelin chefs than us, they have women with Michelin stars and in Portugal there are none.”
After years of being grouped under the Iberian region, often overshadowed by Spanish cuisine, 2024 marks the year that the Michelin group finally gives Portugal its platform with a guidebook, a Portuguese list and an annual awards ceremony showcasing the country as a worthy culinary destination. Despite the disappointment, she’s doubled down and grown her restaurant ownership to three unique expressions of Portuguese gastronomy.
Aside from her Time Out space which serves the best of traditional Portuguese dishes as snacks and mains, she also owns two fine dining establishments namely Marlene, a secret location, a secret menu restaurant where traditional Portuguese ingredients are prepared using fine dining techniques, and finally ZunZum Gastrobar which showcases the chef’s signature touch of culinary creativity using humble Portuguese ingredients. “Portuguese food is comfort food, we like to keep it simple but I also like to try new techniques which add intensity to our authentic simplicity,” she explains.
Marlene’s relentless and somewhat rebellious energy in a patriarchal, traditional industry and country is what makes her story truly remarkable. “I’ve been cooking for over thirty years, since the age of 12,” she tells us. You’d be forgiven for assuming this means she started cooking at home, perhaps helping her mother, whom she acknowledges as a great Portuguese cook, in the kitchen, but it was on a visit to a restaurant that her butcher shop owner parents supplied meat to, that Marlene started her culinary journey. “My first time working in a kitchen was not at home, it was in a professional kitchen. My friend and I offered to help during summer vacation and of course, it’s dangerous so we only did simple things like peeling garlic and potatoes but I watched everything and decided that was my passion.” Marlene Vieira cultivated her distinctly sturdy, thick-skinned demeanour (the Portuguese call it Pulso Firme which means firm hand) up North in Porto where she was born in 1981. It’s her relentlessness that piqued our interest on that first visit but on this second visit, it’s her unique flair for keeping traditional Northern cuisine both relevant and evolving that has our palates tingling.
It’s around 11am and the Time Out Market is already feeling like it’s lunchtime rush hour, it’s so packed that none of us can just leave our seats for fear of one of the many roamers snapping it up. I ask the MD of YourLuxury Africa to become our seat guard for a minute while I follow Chef Marlene into the kitchen just behind the stall. I’m greeted with an air of duck paddling bustle that belies front-of-house composure, as is the case in most restaurant settings. To my delight her kitchen staff is all-female. They smile after we exchange hellos, probably because that’s as far as their English can take them. Chef Marlene’s English also comes out in staccato phrases with pauses where she’s searching for words but thankfully, we’re in the kitchen, where food bridges the gap as a universally understood medium. A deep dish of what I can only describe as chunky doughy bread in a lot of gravy, topped with a fried egg is placed on the service counter in front of the chef. “This is the first dish I learned how to cook as a child. It’s francesinha, it’s like French toast but from Porto. It’s for strong people,” she teases. Inside the bread is steak, sausage, ham, and plenty of cheese, both inside and outside. The generous portion of sauce is made with whisky, beer tomatoes (this is why this dish is for the strong at heart) and finally the dish is topped with an egg.
On our tasting menu curated personally by the chef is her famous olive oil roasted octopus perched on stewed onion and garlic mash potato and spinach, topped with crispy fried potato skin and powdered olive oil, a finishing touch that shows perfectly what makes Time Out Market a culinary gem, fine dining made accessible.
Next is traditional-style Portuguese rice with cod fish, packed with coriander and tomato flavours. On the sides menu is a refreshing octopus salad with red peppers, onion, garlic and olive oil, a codfish salad with chickpeas, onion, garlic and a vinaigrette and finally there’s fresh mussels in tomato sauce. We enjoy this with Pão de Mafra, traditional Portuguese bread from the Marfa region and sample her recently launched white wine, also named after her. As we wrap up, enjoying Portuguese cheese and black pork ham, we realise that Chef Marlene’s stall is sandwiched between two Michelin-starred male chefs’ stalls, how’s that for sweet irony to go with our dessert? “I hope to get it but not because I’m a woman, before I’m a woman I’m also a professional. But of course, Portuguese food starts in the hands of a woman, it’s never the guys so it’s important that we are recognised. Getting the star will also be good because then Portuguese cuisine reaches a new level of exposure and more people experience it, that’s what is important to me.”
